


better than that

by hoshiumies



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Minor Mentions of Violence, No Beta we die like vague gender blobs, galo patches lio up, is that even like ... an actual tag. anyway. they kiss., just overall very mushy bc i'm predictable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23135917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoshiumies/pseuds/hoshiumies
Summary: "Jesus Christ," Galo breathes, wrenching open the cabinets in order to get his first aid kit out. "What happened?"Lio visits Galo in the middle of the night, injured. But it's okay; Galo is here to help him.Always.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 19
Kudos: 343





	better than that

**Author's Note:**

> i am dropping hints that i love galolio comfort.
> 
> just a quick warning, but there is a minor description of blood. it isn't too graphic, but please be mindful of it!

_Can I come over?_

Galo blinks awake at 12:52am to a text from Lio. The light from his phone illuminates his face, and he has to squint the blurry letters on the screen into existence in order to make them out.

What in the world is Lio doing awake this early? More importantly, why is he asking Galo if he can come over?

Galo shuts his phone off so he can think better in the dark, the wallpaper of him and Lio posing for a photo together in front of a fallen Kray Foresight statue blinking out of existence. It's way too early for this; he needs to collect his thoughts—

_FUCK. WAIT._

Immediately, Galo springs up from his bed, fumbling over his bedside table in order to flip the lamp on. 

_yeha yuo can o cme over,_ he types. And then he amends his addled keysmash with a _u can come over. everything ok?_

He waits for a reply, but none comes. Maybe Lio saw his answer and immediately set off. Galo is curious why he'd make such a sudden request in the dead of night, but there's no use pondering on what ifs, since Lio is going to come to him with the answer in that time, anyway.

Instead, he busies himself by tidying up a little around the place, waiting for the telltale rap-rap-rap against his door.

Surprisingly, it comes much earlier than he'd expected—eight minutes later, in fact. Strange. Did Lio take his bike?

"Hello! Welcome to Casa de Ga—Holy shit, Lio, are you okay?!"

Galo's heart practically stops beating when his eyes land on Lio's smaller form. He's curled in on himself, uncharacteristic of the proud, open stance he usually takes. His hands are cradled together, but Galo doesn't mistake the telltale red glint of blood under the hallway's dim light. His jacket is crumpled up, scruffed up where Galo doesn't remember scruffs being present. There's a nasty scrape on the right knee of his black jeans—the fabric is fraying where Galo assumes Lio's knee made contact with the concrete, or whatever he fell on.

All in all, Lio looks like _trash._

Galo immediately steers him in.

The jacket is shrugged off, and so are his boots. Galo tells him it's alright, that he can just leave them at the front. He throws Lio's jacket off into the general direction of his couch. It's okay. He can deal with that later.

_The fire is always first priority._

Lio all but stumbles into Galo, and he takes his hand while leading him into the bathroom. Smacking his hand blindly against the wall until it catches onto the light switch, the small room comes to life with a buzz. He notices with a delayed horror that the substance he's smeared onto the stark whiteness of the button is blood.

"Jesus Christ," Galo breathes, wrenching open the cabinets in order to get his first aid kit out. "What happened?"

He doesn't give Lio any time to reply, though. By the time he's located the kit, he's hurrying over to the toilet, placing the lid down so Lio can sit on it. His hand slips at the last second, and the lid all but slams onto the rim of the toilet. Galo winces, and from his periphery, he notices that Lio's jumped at the offset of sudden noise against the static silence they'd been wandering around in.

This is so unlike him; Galo's worry only increases tenfold. Who is this stranger that he's invited into his apartment? He wears Lio's likeness, but Galo doesn't even think the dull shadow slinking from his feet as he meanders to his temporary seating is the same shape that Lio Fotia usually is.

It's not like that matters. Galo is a medic, first and foremost. If someone in front of him is injured, and he can do something about it, then he's going to fucking do something about it.

(…That's a lie. It always matters when it has to do with Lio. But Galo doesn't know where to put these kinds of complicated feelings, so he shoves them aside. Tending to Lio matters more than whatever's going on in his head—in his mind—in his heart.)

He pokes at Lio's hands, gesturing for him to bare them for Galo to see. Galo tries not to betray the terror he feels when he assesses the damage. There are cuts and grazes all along the soft porcelain of Lio's skin. Lio isn't delicate by any means, but sometimes Galo forgets just how young he actually is. He carries himself with so much grace, and a maturity beyond his years.

He’s so _small,_ and Galo knows that doesn’t directly translate to fragility, but he always wonders how suffocating it must feel to carry such burdens. Lio is only a few years older; he was only a child. They were _both_ just _kids._

"That's not my blood," Lio supplies in lieu of an actual explanation, as Galo gets to wiping down the mess on his hands. "At least, most of it isn't mine."

Okay, great, that definitely makes Galo feel better—not!

"You got into a fight?" Galo is trying to fill in the blanks. He knows that this answer is unlikely—Lio isn't the kind of person to get into actual _fights_ with people. He's more put together than the ticking time bomb that the media often makes him out to be.

But Lio doesn't refute Galo's guess. Instead, he bobs his head up and down. Once. Twice. Like those little bird ornaments that bob their head into glasses of water. Galo had thought that wasn't the case, but never mind, then. Guess he's still kind of an idiot, even if Lio tells him time and time again that he isn't one—not really.

"I’m usually better than this," Lio says, and the break of his voice makes Galo look up, ready to swipe away at the tears he hears welling up in his tone.

But the tears never come.

Galo resumes his work, soaking a cotton ball with antiseptic and dabbing it gently on the back of Lio’s hands.

"You _are_ better than this," he agrees, eyes flickering to meet Lio’s own, "so what happened?"

"I…" Lio bites his bottom lip, and wrenches his gaze to the side, staring blankly at the shower curtains.

If he wants his time, then Galo will give it to him. He would give Lio the world, if he asked. But Lio is kinder than that; he’d never request anything—not for himself. Never for himself. That’s where Galo comes in.

A soft silence rolls over. Finally, he starts again, but with a different sort of inclination.

"A few weeks after the Promare left, the temporary housing unit for the Burnish got vandalized."

Galo scrunches his brows so hard, he’s pretty sure he’ll get a headache from it. "You never told me about that."

Lio shrugs, a wry smile on his face. "You don’t have to know _everything_ about my life, Thymos." And then he drops his shoulders, shifts his leg because he can’t exactly stim with his hands when Galo’s got them in a vice grip in order to patch him up. "I don’t think I even had it in me to be angry anymore. If anything, I was just tired."

"Tired?" Galo repeats as he fishes into the first aid kit and pulls out a bandaid.

"Yeah. Tired. Anger can only get you so far, and I care more about my people than whichever asshole of the week decides to test my morals." Lio pulls his left hand back once the bandaid is on, grinning at the design. "Really? Hello Kitty?"

"Yup." Galo rubs the back of his neck, trying to chase down the heat in his chest. "Gueira said you like Hello Kitty, so…" He isn’t going to bring up the fact that he’d spent an hour hunting for a packet of Hello Kitty bandaids for Lio after that. If asked, he’ll just pretend that he’s always had them. Galo’s good at that; the pretending.

Lio flushes pink under the fluorescent of the bathroom light. Galo thinks it’s cute. He thinks Lio is cute. "…Thank you. You’re sweet."

"You never answered my question." His focus switches to Lio’s right hand now, doing the same song and dance he’d done with the other. He fishes for a response from Lio's side of the court, now that he's lobbed the ball there. But Galo knows that he's under no obligation to reply.

Luckily, Lio bites. "I overheard some people talking about me." He picks lazily at the hem of his shirt, and Galo knows that there’s more to this story than he’s letting on.

"Okay," he says, raising a brow. He wants to test the waters even more. "Again, you’re usually pretty cool-headed about that kinda stuff. What was so different about these guys?"

Lio tugs on the bottom of his lips, seemingly unsure of how to admit it. But it’s okay; Galo is patient. He has to be, in times of emotional vulnerability. "I ignored them, like I usually do. But then they—" He turns to face Galo, eyes full of simultaneous ferocity and sadness. "Then they started to talk about _you._ "

Galo’s hands still at the statement, veins shot with what feels like ice. But he has to be better than this right now. He has to be sturdy—for Lio. Always for Lio.

"About me?" He repeats, instead of saying the other hundred thousand things whirling around in his head.

"Mm," Lio hums placidly, "Making up some conspiracy theories. That you were secretly Burnish. That I was manipulating you. That I still _am._ " There's probably more, but Lio spares Galo the grisly details. "They were so cruel, and I know they were just heckling me, but I… I guess I lost it for a bit, and tried to talk back. Things only got worse from there. I—I didn't mean to pick a fight."

Dusk-shaded eyes meet ocean blue. The medley of their reciprocated gaze tastes like sunset on the beach. But the glossy look accentuating Lio's evening eyes makes Galo feel like _he's_ the one who's about to drown.

"You have to believe me," Lio pleads. "I am not a violent person."

"Of course you're not," Galo affirms.

His heart is doing trick flips at the thought that Lio got hurt because of _him_ —that he got into a fight with some jerks because he wanted to defend Galo's honour. An awful mixture of anxiety, worry, and warmth are slurring around his thoughts. Making his head swim. He blames the urge to bring Lio's injured hand to his lips and kiss it on the palpitations pit-pattering in his chest right now, and the cocktail in his skull.

"I'm not," Lio repeats, voice barely a whisper. He wrenches his eyes downwards again, fixating on Hello Kitty's face. Her yellow nose. Her waving paw. The little white hearts, set against a red backdrop.

"...You usually don't care about what people think. About you. Or about anything else."

"That's not true."

"Isn't it?"

"No." Lio's reply is a sigh. "I don't care what people say about me. But I care about what people are accusing my friends of."

_Be still, my beating heart._

"You don't have to get in trouble just for me, though."

"But I want to. Getting into trouble is kind of my M.O."

Galo knows Lio is making jokes for his sake. But there's a point where the selflessness needs to stop. Lio is practically bleeding on the floor of Galo's bathroom, hyperbole give or take, and he's more concerned about how Galo feels. It's sweet. But it's also incredibly cruel.

"You don't want to drag your friends down. Right?" Galo isn't sure that that's the right answer, but he says it like a statement, anyway.

"You've done a lot for me," Lio whispers. "All I've done in return is make things worse for you. Make people say awful things about you, all because you keep associating with me. I can't keep taking things from you."

"It's not taking if I want to give it to you, Lio. You should have good things." He presses another bandaid to the back of Lio's other hand. This time, it's of Hello Kitty holding some balloons, set against pink. "You _deserve_ to have good things."

"I'm not a good person, Galo." Lio's voice sounds so soft. The plush of his tone is synonymous with the cotton used to swab away at his wounds. "I'm greedy. I'll just keep asking for things."

"Then _be_ greedy. You can ask for anything," Galo says. He’d give it all to Lio—the world, the stars, himself.

"I don’t want to be selfish."

"Nonsense. You could never be selfish." Galo bites back a smile. "You’re better than that."

Lio laughs, and it sounds like little wind chimes in the breeze. Galo could drown in that sound for the rest of his life.

"Can I ask for something right now? If it isn’t too much?"

"Of course!" Does that sound too eager? Maybe it does—but he doesn’t care right now.

Lio rubs the bandage on his hand, thumbing at Hello Kitty’s little red bow. "Kiss me," he chokes out, "But not because I’m dying. Do it properly this time."

_Don’t have to ask_ me _twice._

Galo lurches forward, places his weight against the back of his heels, and slots his mouth against Lio’s. He kisses him—and kisses him, and kisses him, and _kisses him._

And Lio keeps kissing back.

When Galo envisioned his first kiss, he never thought it’d be a life-or-death scenario—never imagined he’d be breathing fire back into the lungs of the person who had just saved his life. And he never thought his second would be in his apartment’s dingy bathroom, sprawled against a slew of medical supplies. And his third, and his fourth, and his fifth.

( _"Galo? Did you save me?" / "You saved me first."_ )

_"I don’t know where to put all this pain,"_ Lio had admitted to him a few weeks ago, calming down from the recesses of a panic attack.

All Galo could do at the moment was soothe circles against his back. He had no answer then; he didn’t know where all that hurt could go.

This time, however, he knows what to do—he places Lio’s hand against his chest, letting his fingers skim against the b-b-beating of his racing heart. Lio gasps into the kiss.

_Here,_ the gesture says, _You can place all of your hurt here. Always, always, always._

Against the press of his mouth, Galo feels Lio’s lips curl into a mirthful smile.

He pulls away, and there's a thrilling sensation in his hands when he catches Lio trying to chase his mouth again.

"Feeling okay?"

Galo can't even fight back the grin on his face. He's absolutely blooming with delight. It was foolish to think that he could've ever stolen the sun for Lio. With the way that Galo orbits around him, it was only a matter of time before he'd come to realize that he's been the sunflower longing for light this entire time.

"I don't know…" Lio's mouth trails off into a pout. Galo is about to panic, but then he tacks on a cheeky, "I might need a little more kisses to heal my wounds, doctor."

"You're rotten," Galo says, shaking his head. "So, so rotten."

Lio is ridiculous—absolutely inscrutable. This boy is inscrutable. But that's fine. Galo wants to figure him out, piece by piece. He'd be content if he had to do that forever.

"But I'm not selfish?"

"No," Galo responds.

He sweeps the supplies he'd been using to patch Lio up to the side. He can deal with that later. Like the jacket. Like the boots. Lio is first priority.

How long has that been the truth for?

Galo leads Lio out the bathroom, out the mess of his bedroom, and into the living room. He's thinking of making comfort food. Does grilled cheese count? Does Lio even _like_ grilled cheese? There's still some things that Galo doesn't know about him.

"You're not selfish," he repeats, as he carves a path into the kitchenette. From his spot on the couch, Galo can see the way that Lio's eyes gleam. He turns around, stares at him over the breakfast counter.

"You're better than that."

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! this was just a small drabble that i didn't want to put into my collection, so i placed it here. i hope you enjoyed it!


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